“John, you have been smoking to-day, and, from your restless, impatient look, you expect a long lecture, but I will wait before I say what I have to say on the subject. I want you to get to sleep now. It is so warm I will open the window, and take out the lamp to prevent the insects coming in, and I hope you will become composed.”
She left the room, and I began that hardest of all tasks—trying to go to sleep. An intensely hot night! just light enough out doors to make a checked square of the window; not a leaf quivering; not a sound without but the incessant quavers of the katydids; down stairs the noise and mirth of merry converse!
Tossing from side to side of the bed; now shaking up my pillow, then reversing my position, and lying with my head at the foot board; then stretching directly across the bed, with my hands hanging down over the sides; in all positions I vainly sought a cool place. The very sheets, except that they were wrinkled, seemed to have just come from under the iron; and even the mahogany of the foot board, when I laid my cheek against it, felt tepidly disagreeable. At last, after trying every conceivable position on the bed, I fell asleep with my feet pressed against the cool wall, and while watching a firefly that had gotten into the room, and was flashing his tiny lamp hither and thither as he flitted along the ceiling, trying to escape. My slumber was uneasy and fitful, and I was dreaming of strange oppressions and sensations, and continually waking, to hear the laughter and mirth down stairs.
Perhaps conscience added a thorn to my pillow; but I could remember no definite sin I had committed. The cigar was surely not wrong, for father, and a great many others who were good, smoked. I could not then analyze my moral nature and detect the wrong, but years have since shown me ‘twas in the lack of moral courage, in the yielding to what I was ashamed of, simply because I was ashamed to refuse.
Very young men deem the cigar an important adjunct to manhood, and when they smoke to look manly, the oath and glass are not far off. A good rule in forming this almost national habit is to light your first cigar before father or mother without a blush, and the harm resulting will be solely physical.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
Father and Lulie have been gone an hour; father on his way to Havana, Lulie returning to Wilmington. Frank and Ned have gone with them over to town. I am lying on a lounge in the hall, and mother and Carlotta are sitting near me, arranging flowers for the parlor vases. Lulie got off without much trouble with the assistance of mother’s tact; Ned expressing great surprise, while Frank was almost rude in his solicitations to her to remain. Dear little darling, how tenderly she bade me farewell, whispering as she pressed my hand, “Don’t be hurt at my leaving, John, ‘tis for your sake as much as mine!”
My eyes are closed, and mother and Carlotta think I am asleep, but through a scarcely lifted lid I am watching Carlotta, feasting my eyes on her beautiful face and form. She is sitting just inside the hall door, with a lap full of flowers, and though I cannot see her face, I gaze on an arm and hand that Phidias might dream of, but never carve.
Her muslin sleeve was turned up to her shoulder, to be out of the way, and the flesh, soft and snowy, swelled out from the richly worked undersleeve, and almost imperceptibly tapered to the elbow, with here and there a tiny thread of blue, winding its way under the transparent skin. At the elbow two dimples showed where the liquid flesh eddied round the curve, and a slope of perfect grace carried it to the wrist; here no knots disfigured, no roughness marred it, but, smooth and delicate, the wrist became a fitting bridge between such a hand and arm. Her hair, caught back by a crimson velvet band, fell in a dark shower over her shoulders; not the wiry ringlets, nor the hard straight locks that all are familiar with, but in soft undulating waves it fell, as if fairies were trembling the silken strands. Her profile was exquisite, and the beautiful proportion of each feature, and the delicate tints that overspread them, formed altogether a picture that has rarely been surpassed for loveliness. The peculiar witchery of the face, as I gazed upon it, was enhanced by an occasional frown and arch of the pencilled brow, as she endeavored to draw a refractory thread through the stems of the flowers.